The Reader, Writer, and Text Relationship

The IB "Readers, Writers and Texts" area of exploration asks a deceptively simple question: what actually happens when a person reads something? The answer involves three participants who are always in dialogue with one another—the writer who shapes language toward some end, the text that exists as an arrangement of words on a page or screen, and the reader who brings a mind, a history, and a set of expectations to the act of interpretation. None of these three can produce meaning alone. Meaning is not simply poured from the writer's head into the reader's; it is co-constructed in the encounter.

The three participants

Think of the relationship as a triangle. The writer makes choices: which words, which structure, which point of view, which things to leave unsaid. Those choices are delibera